Family Matters

1016 A.D., alternate timeline

-o-

"He can't be," Lucca gasped. "He looks like the queen, but. . ." She snapped a look at Crono. He held up his hands defensively and shook his head.

"If she's the princess," Zeo said, "she'll be wearing Mom's dreamstone pendant." Silently, Marle reached into the throat of her suit, and pulled out the pendant.

"How did you. . ."

"I usually get out of the castle when the guard on the northeast tower takes his break," Zeo said, "but with everyone so excited I bet you had to use the blind spot on the west wall." Marle's eyes got wider. "Your real name," Zeo said, "is probably Aliza. After Her-Majesty-Grandmama. Mom told me she would have named me that, if I'd been a girl."

"Lucca's right," Princess Aliza said. "You can't be. There is no such person. If Mother had another child, the whole kingdom would know."

"We should explain," Kurt said. "We're time travelers. Zeo and I traveled back to the Ice Age by accident, from a 1016 with a different King and, obviously, a different Heir. But we changed something, and when we came back with Fina it wasn't quite our home, it was… this."

One glance warned Zeo not to mention who the "different King" was. It made sense - Zeo wasn't about to throw himself on a "father" who didn't know him. He wasn't a baby.

"Time travel?" Lucca said. "I mean, it's a cute theory, but I don't see how it could ever really be done. . ."

"The key is finding a standing time-space resonance point, called a Gate," Kurt said. "Then you can open it with. . . well, here." He pulled out a piece of paper and sketched her a rough schematic of a Gate Key.

"Who taught you that?" Lucca asked.

Kurt smiled wryly. "You did, Mistress. I'm your apprentice."

Lucca laughed. "The other me, you mean? What's my apprentice doing hanging out with the Prince of Guardia?" Since she herself was hanging out with the Princess of Guardia, she didn't mean it too seriously.

"You were on the Privy Council," Zeo said. "There's no Red Rose Rebellion in my world. Dad's a good king, and Mom loves him." That last seemed to affect Aliza more than anything else. She bit her lip and looked away.

"Wait a minute," Lucca said. "Zeo, your parents never married - you were never born. Isn't that a paradox?"

Zeo winced. "I've been trying not to think about that."

"It's worse for me," Kurt said. "My father is - was - Fritz Leidermark."

There was a solemn pause. "I'm sorry," Lucca said quietly. "We never knew until years after."

"Don't apologize - in my timeline you saved him. But yeah," Kurt rubbed his hair, "this happened before, and apparently last time the person vanished in a few hours. It's been three or four days, for us."

"Like waiting in a guillotine," Zeo muttered. Crono gave him a dry sort of smile.

"So you want to restore your history," Lucca mused. "Quickly."

"Wait a minute," Aliza said. "If they do that, what happens to me?"

"Er." Kurt said. "Well. By one way of looking at it, you grow up in a happy family and a peaceful kingdom."

Aliza folded her arms. "As a boy." Zeo bit his thumb at her. "And couldn't you also say that I'll vanish and he'll live?"

"Don't be childish, Marle," Lucca said. "If we could undo this whole war and bring back everyone who died - all the way back to Fritz - isn't that worth anything? Isn't that wortheverything?"

Aliza bit her lip, took a deep breath, and nodded.

"Okay, then. . ." Lucca looked around. "Wait. We're not secure enough for this. Marle, put your mask back on. We need to clear this whole half of the base. This whole mess is need-to-know only, and nobody else needs to know. Not another word until I get back." She strode out of the room.

"May I ask you for food?" Fina said.

"Oh, sure," Aliza said, adjusting her mask over her nose. "It's this way. I'm hungry, too." Kurt and Zeo tagged along. . . but as Zeo was going out the door, last in line, Crono put a hand on his shoulder. Zeo's eyes widened. He glanced at Kurt, who nodded, and followed Fina and Aliza toward the pantry.

"Food for five, uh, three," Aliza told the cook. "And don't dawdle, Lucca's coming around to dismiss you to quarters." She looked back into the hallway. "Where did Crono and Zeo go?"

"They hung back to talk," Kurt said. "I think Crono wanted to thank him."

Aliza stood for a moment, distracted, as the cook dished out her dinner. "Thanks," she said without looking. "I'll be back for it." And she started back toward the planning room.

"Where you going?" Kurt asked, following her. Fina stayed with the food, looking after them curiously.

"Something strange is going on here." She looked at Kurt. "Who is the king in your timeline?"

"Um. . . couldn't tell you, off the top of my head. You know how it is, everyone just calls him King Guardia."

"You liar. He's your best friend's father." Kurt hesitated. "Or, why did Zeo spend three days figuring out how to rescue Crono when he thought he had six hours to live? What would make some random commoner that important?" They were getting close enough to hear Crono and Zeo's voices. Aside from pitch, they sounded exactly the same. "I have eyes. It's not hard to guess who Mother would have married if she'd been free to choose."

Kurt sighed. "Look, they just want some time to talk. Let's just leave them be. . ." Aliza stepped into the planning room doorway. Crono and Zeo were across the room. Zeo was leaning against the wall, as though to favor his bad leg, but he was hunched in on himself miserably. Neither of them saw Aliza and Kurt.

"I thought you were going to die," Zeo was saying. "I still don't know if you're alive in the other timeline."

Crono put his hand on Zeo's head. It was an awkward gesture, but it had the aspect of a blessing. He leaned forward and murmured something.

Zeo broke down and grabbed him in a fierce hug. "No, I wasn't. Not like you. Oh, Dad, I was so scared."

Aliza started into the room, expression fierce. Kurt grabbed her elbow. She fought him for a moment, then broke away and ran back down the hallway, silent as a ghost. Kurt went after her, as quietly as he could, which wasn't very.

She was slumped on the floor around the corner, back to the wall. "Do you have any idea what it's like, living with that cold son of a Countess up in the castle? All I am to him is proof that the crown won't stay in his family. I'm useless, because I'm not a boy. He ordered the guards not to teach me to fight - 'we shall, at very least, have a proper princess to marry off.'" Her impression of her father's voice was nasty and precise. "The sergeant who defied him was one of the first people to die for the Red Rose." She lowered her mask enough to wipe her nose.

"If he was that disappointed in you," Kurt reasoned, "wouldn't he have tried again?"

"He wanted to. Mother refused him. There was a doctor who said another birth might kill her; I don't know if it was the truth. The rat threatened to have her killed anyway." Kurt sucked air in through his teeth. "Thank God he's such a gutless worm."

"That brainless brat," she jerked her head back, indicating Zeo, "is everything I was supposed to be. And Crono. . . my mother told me about the Millennial Fair. She didn't tell his name, but whenever Crono looks at me, there's this bitterness way in the back of his eyes. And I'd always imagine how it might have been."

"Aliza. . ."

"He's supposed to be my father," she hissed. "He's supposed to be my father!" She pounded the wall. Kurt grabbed her fist before she could do it again.

"You'll hurt your hand." He unfolded her fist, very gently, and slipped his hand into hers. She didn't resist.

-o-

Lucca looked around the planning table. "Okay, we're all set. Where were we?" Nobody answered her. Crono was looking at Zeo, who wouldn't meet his eyes. Aliza was glaring at Zeo, and Kurt was looking sadly at Aliza.

Obviously Fina had missed something, probably more than one thing. "You had just decided to help us restore Zeo and Kurt's history," she said, ending the awkward silence.

"Okay, then," Lucca said. "How do we do that?"

Zeo put his knife on the table. "We put this back together. This is Mune, half of the dreamstone knife that was supposed to turn into the legendary sword Masamune. This guy in black took it and brought it forward to 1016, where it, uh," he glanced guiltily at Kurt, "got broken." Fina could not resist a smirk. She wondered which one of them had done it.

"So we fix it and bring it back, and everything's fine?"

"I. . . I think so," Kurt said. "Certainly breaking the Masamune wasn't good for history. But if that's the only problem, I don't know why history split off when it did - you guys should havestarted your quest and failed halfway through."

"We can kill that game when we find it," Fina said. "We know we should restore the knife, so we shall."

"So where's the other half?" Aliza asked.

Zeo sighed. "That's the thing, the wizard who took the knife still has it. And he's a time traveler - I doubt he's hanging around this era."

"I also doubt," Fina said, "that he is on the snow plains of my time, back through the Gate we came here by. We should hunt for his time of origin."

Lucca thought about this. "So what you need now is a new Gate? How do we find it?"

Zeo frowned and toyed with the knife. "It's hard to say," Kurt said. "Last time they all got found by accident, or with tools we don't have here." The knife wobbled to a stop. Zeo spun it again, idly. "And they're invisible until you bring a Gate Key nearby - or Mune, which apparently acts like a Key." The knife finished spinning again, and Zeo reached for it.

"Wait!" Everyone stopped and stared at Fina. "Zeo, spin the knife again. Faster, this time."

Zeo looked confused, but he shrugged, grabbed the red knife by the middle, and spun it hard. When it stopped, Fina laid a string of beads along side it, to mark the direction it pointed. "Again." Zeo spun Mune again, and when it stopped, it was again parallel to the beads. "Always, the knife points the same way - south."

"Dreamstone's not magnetic, though," Kurt said.

"And anyway," Lucca added, consulting some round device from her pocket, "that's not due south."

"Mune knows our way," Fina said firmly.

"You do?" Zeo said, not to Fina but to empty space - or rather, to a spirit Fina and the others could not see. "Uh," he said after a moment. "He says he can hear the wind blowing through a maybeso, far away." He shrugged apologetically. "He gets a little weird sometimes."

"Which is weirder," Aliza muttered, "the knife, or the guy talking to the knife?" Zeo heard - he'd been supposed to, Fina guessed - and gave her a dirty look.

"Far away in that direction means the southern continent," Lucca said, "unless it's in the middle of the ocean. Either way, Crono and Marle and I won't be able to help you directly. The ferries are watched, and so is Zenan Bridge. They'd recognize us."

"Anyway," Aliza said, "I have to get back, before I'm missed."

"But we do have people who can help you," Lucca went on. "Crono can introduce you."

-o-

"How nice of you to visit," she said, kissing Crono on the cheek. "And who are your friends?"

"I'm Zeo," said Zeo, feeling very strange at introducing himself to his own grandmother.

"Oh, you're adorable," she said, pinching his cheek. "He looks just like you when you were that age," she added to Crono, who coughed self-consciously. Apparently some things never changed, even when the entire course of history was knocked askew.

"This is Kurt, and that's Fina," Zeo went on.

"Good to see you, ma'am," Kurt said, who of course had met her before. He should have said "meet you."

"Of course," she said smoothly. "How have you been?" This made Kurt blink, until he remembered that Zeo's white-haired grandmother was part of a rebellion in this timeline and even in the old one was startlingly bright when she paid attention. She knew this was Red Rose business, and if she sounded casual it was because she also knew how thin her walls were. She had not said Crono's name.

"It's been a rough few days," Kurt admitted. "Better just lately."

"Thank you for welcoming me into your house," Fina said, pronouncing the last word awkwardly.

"Why, you're very welcome, dear. Can I take your coat?"

"Ah, no, thank you." Fina had sold most of her furs, but she kept one waist-length white cape. A shaman was no shaman unless she wore white fur.

"Whatever makes you comfortable." As she turned away, she gave Zeo an approving wink. Zeo choked and muttered something like how does she always do that?

"We can't stay long," Kurt said. "We're on our way to the southern continent."

"Oh, really? Well, it just happens that I own a cart I hire sometimes to merchants who want things sent to other cities. I have a trip coming up, and I've been looking for some healthy young people to do the heavy lifting." She was a smuggler for the Red Rose, of course, and this whole conversation was a cover. There was no need to say anything suspicious here, so they didn't.

"That sounds perfect," Zeo said.

"Then we can leave this afternoon.

-o-

"What's in the barrels?" the guard asked.

"Apples," Zeo's grandmother said. "Bound for market in Porre." Zeo, Kurt, and Fina lounged among the barrels like bored teenagers, their weapons hidden in the bottom of the cart.

"Yeah? Well, we'd better crack a couple open, and take a look."

"Oh?" The old woman was shifting a small purse of coins from hand to hand. "Well, you may certainly look if you think it's worth the time."

"Ahh. . . no, come to think of it, it's probably not necessary."

"What a nice boy." The little purse slipped out of her hand and landed right at the guard's feet. "Oops, how clumsy of me. Well, I'll see you boys on the way back." And she shook the reins, and the cart rolled past the checkpoint.

"They have to know you're a smuggler," Zeo said quietly, a few minutes later.

"Yes. An eager young officer had my barrels cracked open once. You know what he found?"

"Apples?" Kurt guessed.

"It was potatoes that time, dear, but you've got the right idea. Half the time I'm just giving some young people an excuse to be on the bridge."

"One side!" a voice shouted behind them. "Make way, in the name of the King!" However much he shouted, though, it was late afternoon on Zenan Bridge, and he wasn't going to go much faster than anyone else.

"Hey," Zeo said, looking back. "Isn't that the Infinite Boredom Wagon?"

"Pardon?" Fina asked.

"The Heir's formal carriage," Kurt translated. "And yeah, it is. It's not the same one, but it's got the right heraldry."

"So inside is Princess Aliza," Fina said. "While outside are fifteen guards in face-concealing helmets."

As the Infinite Boredom Wagon struggled past, they all considered the likelihood of Marle asking her father for an escort to the southern continent.

"His Smarmy Majesty must have finally figured her out," Zeo said. "We've gotta do something."

"What you 'got to do,' young man," his grandmother said, "is get far away from my cart before you do put on your masks and start waving swords around. There's no reason to throw away my cover, you might need it."

"Yes, of course," Kurt said. He tossed Zeo the bundle with his sword belt in it, and picked up his own bag. "Come on, guys. I have a plan."